Back in 2022, Rosalía found her place in the pop pantheon by tapping into something no one could have predicted. After El Mal Querer, her ambitious 2018 flamenco-trap-pop statement, and a steady stream of collaborations with the biggest names in Latine music and gringo pop, the Catalan singer released MOTOMAMI in 2022, an album that combined her impressive musical abilities with dembow, merengue, and other dancefloor fodder, landing her at the top of the charts and headlining some of the biggest festivals in the world, including Coachella. Three years later, after courting controversy and demonstrating she could play the game with virtuosic ability, she turns her vision away from the charts and towards a heavenly realm: LUX.
“I feel a deep commitment; it’s like my mission in life is to make music,” she tells Remezcla in Mexico City, likening her exploration of religious imagery to her devotion to music. “I dedicate most of my time and energy to it. Ever since I was little, I knew that’s what I wanted to do. I do think that in some way, the love I have for music is similar to the love I feel for God. They’re very close to each other for me.”
In many ways, LUX is MOTOMAMI’s antithesis. Where the latter spent its running time cracking the code of 2020s pop to rebuild it using her strengths as a flamenco singer and endless artistic curiosity, the former is less interested in fitting in; it would rather stand out. LUX explores where the divine and the terrestrial meet and how faith can inspire the most sacred of music and the purest of love, even in the midst of sorrow and heartbreak. Musically, it relies heavily on orchestral instrumentation courtesy of the London Symphony Orchestra, who explore everything from baroque music to avant-garde techno to rumba to R&B-tinged balladry to Portuguese fado while alternating between 14 different languages. It’s one of the most ambitious albums by a chart-topping artist ever.
LUX is an album about devotion. Not only is it dedicated to God, but each track is based on a female saint from a different part of the world. So, was creating such a sprawling album divine inspiration? “I think it’s something that’s always been there, but this time, I felt truly prepared to create an entire project like this,” she says. “God has blessed me so much in my life, and what better way to give back than by making a record? It’s not even something totally new to me, because these themes have been present in my earlier work.”
The album opens with “Sexo, Violencia, Llantas,” dramatically mixing piano, synths, and choir vocals as an overture for the rest of the album. On “Reliquia,” Rosalía reflects on everything that she has lost in her travels and proclaims that she will become a relic to her lover, while strings swell and heavy electronics reminiscent of the British avant-garde duo Autechre conjure chaos and sorrow. “Mio Cristo Piange Diamanti” (“My Christ Cries Diamonds”), sung entirely in Italian, is a piano ballad that likens heartbreak with martyrdom and showcases her most impressive vocals on tape so far, showing range and dynamics like never before. “Un Nuevo Mundo” and “De Madrugada” see her touch on flamenco, with added orchestral arrangements and lyrics exploring sex with maturity and desire. “Dios Es Un Stalker” uses a cello to deliver a subtle dembow, leading to a salsa-like passage and back again. Closing track “Magnolias” is another slow-burner, this time finding Rosalía leaving us with her visions for her funeral.
“I feel a deep commitment; it’s like my mission in life is to make music… [I]n some way, the love I have for music is similar to the love I feel for God.”
While she’s not new to musical fusion, this time the styles she uses were directly linked to each martyr she based the song on. “Throughout the project, you’ll find influences from many places, just like the stories of the saints. Musically, it draws from all over. For example, the bassline [played by a cello] in ‘Porcelana’ is inspired by [South African] amapiano basslines,” she explains. When asked about the challenges of arranging the songs in LUX, she answers without hesitation: “[It was] the hardest [challenge] of my life! Honestly. I’d never done a project this big before. It was demanding in every sense—but also so rewarding. The arrangements took almost a year to finish, many hours at the piano, refining everything. It was a real team effort.”
Likewise, one of the aspects of the album that has had people talking is the use of many different languages. “I remember putting up a world map in my room and marking it with pins, trying to understand where each [saint] was from, what language she spoke, what her story was, and what moved me about it. Then I’d write a song inspired by that. I wanted to find women whose stories were interconnected—unconventional lives, incredible women who were writers, nuns, and poets, who found ways to live differently from what was expected of women in their time. Often, becoming a nun gave them the freedom to pursue education and creative work that otherwise wouldn’t have been possible.”
“Throughout the process of making this album, I approached the lyrics in the same way, no matter the language,” she says about the process of integrating other tongues into her lyrics. “The languages that come naturally to me are Spanish and Catalan, so I wrote in those mostly. Sometimes the translation didn’t rhyme or sound right, so I’d send back 20 different versions—similar but not the same—to see what worked best phonetically and metrically. It was like solving a puzzle. For example, the song ‘Jeanne’ is inspired by Joan of Arc, so I sing it in French.”
While the bulk of the album is less keen on fitting in the pop charts, LUX is still a pop effort, and some songs are definitely easy on the ears. For example, “La Perla,” featuring Yahritza y Su Esencia, is a traditional corrido about a womanizing ex, while “Novia Robot” is the track’s most contemporary pop-sounding track, full of pop electronics and hooks about men wanting machines instead of humans for girlfriends. Still, it features lyrics in Mandarin as well as Spanish, so we’re not talking about a conventional radio hit. However challenging it might be, the album’s virtuosic musicality and Rosalía’s vocals, as well as relatable lyrics, can win over crowds, as proven by “Berghain”’s massive success.
Rosalía herself doesn’t know where LUX fits in today’s musical landscape. “Just the other day, my team was wondering what label do we put it under when it goes to stores, and, honestly, I don’t know,” she says. “It draws from music all over the world—from classical music, from flamenco. It has pop ambition but also experimental elements, because the whole process was experimental. I have no idea. I’d rather let others decide where it belongs when they hear it.”
LUX is out now.
